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Mileena
Mileena is a player and and a one-time boss character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. Mileena was originally known as the personal assassin of the Outworld's evil emperor Shao Kahn and twin sister of his stepdaughter Princess Kitana, but in a truth she is a deformed clone of her created by the sorcerer Shang Tsung. She is usually defined by her fierce rivalry with Kitana, though the series also serving masters other than Shao Kahn and desiring power for herself. Since her introduction in 1993 as Kitana's palette swap character, Mileena gained significant popularity and become one of Mortal Kombat's most iconic characters. She was used in the games' promotion as a designated sex symbol, but her appearances in the various related media have been relatively rare and minor, compared to Kitana. She received a mixed (mostly due to a remarkable dualism of her character design) but generally favourable critical reception. In video games After the ruler of the other dimensional realm Outworld, Shao Kahn, conquered the realm of Edenia and merged it with his own, he decided he would keep the former king's daughter Kitana alive and raise her as his own. Though she grew up knowing nothing of her origin, Kahn nonetheless feared that one day Kitana would discover her true parentage and turn against him, so he ordered Shang Tsung to bring to life a more vicious and loyal version of Kitana that could take her place if necessary, and this has been done by fusing the essence of both Kitana and a Tarkatan warrior from Baraka's race. The process was not a complete success, however, as the hybrid clone turned out to be disfigured with a hideous mouth of the Tarkata. Instead of replacing Kitana, as originally planned, Mileena would be used to ensure her allegiance to him, and so Shao Kahn introduced Mileena to Kitana as her supposedly lost twin sister. The two thus grew up together as his daughters and personal assassins, though Mileena (who also became a companion of Baraka) secretly grew to harbor great bitterness and jealousy towards Kitana, whom Kahn nevertheless favored over her.2 As Kahn feared, Kitana did finally find the truth about her past and so Mileena was ordered to keep close watch over her rival when Kitana secretly allied with Earthrealm warriors during the events of Mortal Kombat II (1993). The two are pitted against each other in the tournament, but Kitana proves to be superior and Mileena is killed, her soul descending into the Netherrealm. In Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (2005), the beat'em up retelling of Mortal Kombat II, Mileena (voiced by Lita Lopez) fights against Liu Kang and Kung Lao alongside Jade and Kitana under Kahn's mental control, but is defeated by the two Shaolin warriors and flees to the Wasteland to seek help from Goro.2 Damned to the Netherrealm after her death, Mileena swears fealty to Shinnok, the ruler of this realm. During the events of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (1996), Shao Kahn attempts to resurrect Mileena. Shinnok sees this as an opportunity to secretly monitor the events unfolding in Earthrealm, and thus he allows Mileena to return to life, also magically granting her the ability to read Kitana's thoughts.3 After Kahn is defeated, Mileena is summoned back to the Netherrealm. In Mortal Kombat Gold (1999), she assists in Shinnok's invasion of Edenia, but allows her sister to escape from a dungeon. After Shinnok's defeat, Mileena comes to Kitana' palace and demands the power over Edenia to be shared with her but Kitana refuses and, when attacked, traps Mileena, locking her away in a dungeon. Mileena remains imprisoned for years, until Onaga the Dragon King began his own invasion of Edenia, during which she is freed from her imprisonment by Baraka. During the events of Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), Mileena (voiced by Johanna Añonuevo) is ordered to pose as Kitana in order to mislead the princess' armies while Onaga gathered his strength. However, as Mileena begins the game's titular deception, she also secretly decides to take control of both the forces of Edenia and Onaga's own undead army for herself. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), Mileena seizes Shao Kahn's fortress in the name of "peace". As she did this still under the guise of Kitana, she decides to continue her charade until the Edenian armies were corrupted enough to follow her under her true identity. Though at first confident that Outworld is hers to rule, when the returning Shao Kahn mounts an offensive against the fortress to re-instate his rule over Outworld she is forced to reveal herself and surrender to him. Kahn then commands her to capture Shujinko, whom she helped to train in his youth and who would be used as a bargaining chip in gaining Onaga as an ally. Mileena, pretending to be Kitana, succeeds in capturing Shujinko, taking him to Shao Kahn's palace. But having tasted power for herself, she is no longer content with being his minion and get the throne of Edenia back for herself. She is later killed by Shang Tsung during the final all-out battle at the Soulnado.3 Mileena returns in Mortal Kombat (2011), an alternative-timeline retelling of the original Mortal Kombat trilogy. In this game, Mileena (voiced by Karen Strassman) was created by Shang Tsung in the "Flesh Pit" and introduced during the second tournament, instead of many years earlier. Meant to be a loyal replacement for Kitana, she is physically and mentally damaged, her animalistic rage controlled only by Shao Kahn as she uses her lascivious demeanor to lure victims and then slaughter and devour them.4 In the game's story mode, she serves as an opponent for Kitana, Jade, Stryker and Kabal, and is referred to by Shao Kahn as his "true daughter"; when Kahn appaers to be killed, his minions even discuss making her the new ruler of Outworld. Her new personality is much more immature (even infantile) than the cold and calculating Mileena of the previous games and Kitana is even shown to be an unusually sympathic towards her (in Kitana's uncanonical ending). Mileena was the first evil female character to appear in the series, created by John Tobias. Tobias recalled that Mileena was created just to accommodate another palette swapped character, adding: "I took advantage of Kitana and Mileena being masked sisters to make a play on the veil myth… One sister is beautiful. One is ugly. One is good. One is evil. Choose wisely before asking one on a date."5 Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon described the sisters as the "female versions of Scorpion and Sub-Zero".6 'Design' Mileena was thus originally conceived as a purple-clad version of Kitana, originally portrayed by Katalin Zamiar in Mortal Kombat II. Becky Gable took over the part from Zamiar for the development of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and in the later games no video footage actors were used. Since Mileena's debut in MKII, her characteristic weapon is a pair of sharp sai,4 that at first she has been using in combat only as projectiles and during some of her finishing moves (eventually, the sai were given more use and a magical aura of purple energy in MK2011). Only in MK Gold Mileena also uses a European longsword, Scorpion's weapon in the both versions of MK4. Her UMK3 Animality transformation animal is a small skunk. Mileena is physically identical to Kitana with the exception of her infamous Tarkatan jaw. Boon described Mileena as "Anti-Kitana" and revealed that her large "sharp, nasty teeth" were not originally planned and were only drawn for her Fatality "Man-Eater" (featured only in MKII in UMK3/MKT, in which she appears to magically consume her opponent whole and immediately afterwards spews out a hail of clean bones7).8 Following MKII, her teeth were also almost never used again in gameplay until MK2011 (in a leap attack to bite an opponent in the neck and in a Fatality in which she gnaws on the defeated enemy's severed head),9 with a sole exception of a Fatality in Deception (in which she tears the opponent's head off using her teeth). Her teeth got noticeably downsized in Deception and Armageddon. Mileena's skin color usually appears to be mildly darker than Kitana, although she was never even remotely as dark as Jade's. Since all three of them were given more varying appearances in Gold, Mileena's shoulder-long jet-black hair is usually much shorter than Kitana's and Jade's and most often wore gathered in a ponytail (except the first games, in which all Kitana-derived characters' hair is mid-back level and loose in MKII and and pinned back in UMK3/MKT). One element of her anatomy that is often changing from one game to another are her eyes, as she had began with human eyes in MKII, but in UMK3/MKT and MKG her eyes changed to show her being "undead" (all-white with no pupils and irises, similar to these of Scorpion). In the later games she was reverted to her normal eyes, while in the 2011 reboot she has Tarkatan (Baraka-like) whole-yellow glowing eyes with slit pupils (with exception of when she is wearing her alternate UMK3 costume, for which she has human eyes once again10). Her main color has been either a shade of purple or magenta in various installments, although her main costume in Deception is actually mostly black. In her initial appearances, Mileena is clad in a re-colored versions of Kitana's costumes. Later, Mileena's outfits has been getting ever more skimpy with every new game,7 including a completely exposed midriff since Deception. In Gold, Mileena's outfit differed from Kitana's in any way save color the first time. Steve Beran, character designer of Deception, said that he "wanted to give Mileena an Arabic feel to her costume and the final version showed a lot more skin and her mask developed into more of a veil."115 Her main (more covering) outfit features long flowing sleeves and back-only loincloth and the veil is partially transparent. In Shaolin Monks, Millena appears half-naked in a costume made largely of just multiple belts of leather and scraps of fabric and even barefoot (with a bandaged midfoot), and again wearing a veil instead of a mask. In MK2011, Mileena's prime costume is based on her famous Deception provocative alternate, but with more details and again featuring a mask instead of a veil. One of her alternate costumes in this game (out of at least four, which was the largest number out of all characters until the MKII style costumes were given to Kitana and Jade), including her "klassic" UMK3 costume is actually made out of just some bandages put on her naked body, without even a mask and again barefoot.126 'Gameplay' Mileena is a secret character in UMK3, in which she needs to be unlocked using a special "Kombat Kode",13 but is available from the start in the compilation game Mortal Kombat Trilogy. She is not playable in MK: Shaolin Monks, where she instead appears only as a hostile boss character alongside Kitana and Jade, as well as an optional boss in a secret-stage encounter, but has appeared (in the super deformed-style "cute" form) in every minigame ("Chess Kombat", "Puzzle Kombat" and "Motor Kombat") through the series. Most of her Fatalities involve use of sai, including to immobilize her opponent during the kill, and in some of them she pretends to kiss her victim (CU Amiga called her MKII Fatality "the kiss of death to end all kisses"14).7 In the early 1990s there was also a false urban legend regarding a supposed "Nudality" finishing move.1516 Mileena was widely seen as a top-tier character of Mortal Kombat II. Mortal Kombat II According to GamePros official strategy guide, while Jax is the best overall fighter in this game, Mileena's "massive advantage" over him made her an ultimate "Queen of the Hill" ("With her rapid Sai-throwing ability, teleport attacks, and deadly combos, this beautiful assassin lands atop our ratings"). In their test, Mileena players won most matches against other characters and especially many against Jax, Reptile (ranked by the guide as the worst MKII fighter) and Shang Tsung.17 A similar observation was voiced by Amiga Format, noting that she and Kitana were always "so much faster" that Jax "ended getting his head kicked in every time."18 According to CU Amiga, Mileena was "third only to Jax and Liu Kang for sheer brillance", being a "somewhat misleading character" whose moves need to be "learnt the right way to put them all together to be devastating".19 Mileena was also the best overall fighter of MKII according to Sega Visions (Jax was named as the second-best fighter by them too), citing high speed and reach, and her her teleport kick that can dodge projectiles.20 However, according to Nintendo Power, Mileena original MKII powers "may prove insufficient" for using her with same effectiveness in UMK3.21 Sega Saturn Magazine wrote simply "she's pretty much identical to the last time."22 In fact, Mileena has never get had any new special attacks until the Mortal Kombat reboot game in 2011 (about 18 years after the arcade release of Mortal Kombat II). According to Prima Games' official guide for Armageddon, in this game Mileena is a better character than Kitana ("seems to have the upper hand between the two"), but while Mileena "is able to punish from any range and even interrupt high attacks and projectiles, the damage she inflicts is minor"; she was rated overall 6/10. According to Prima's official guide for the 2011 Mortal Kombat, she is a well-balanced fighter that displays neither particular (a big enough for one-sided battle) weakness to nor adventage over any other character.